Placing truth on the disabled list

The ball sailed over the fence to end the 2006 season, and took with it the final hopes of the Mets in the World Series. No miracle, Endy or otherwise, would change that. After a few hours or days of disbelief, it was easy for a fan to look back at the season with pride in a job well done, if not completed. As winter waned some months later, pitchers and catchers couldn’t report for duty fast enough.

April ’07 rolled around and it was easy to be optimistic. So close, yet so far just 6 months earlier, it was to be a season to fulfill the promise of the previous one. But, come September, The Collapse.

The summer of ’08 led the Mets into the All Star break as the then hottest team in baseball, having finished the first half with a 9-game winning streak. But once championship home-field advantage was surrendered to the AL (almost single-handedly by Dan Uggla), the Mets’ season’s surrender appeared to follow close behind. In the end, another collapse, this one awash in a surreal feeling of familiarity. The darkest road is never again as uncomfortable as the first time it’s traveled, and we’d now been down this road before.

Beginning this current 162 game stretch of passion, fans again had reasons to believe. Not just because of the massive improvements to the previous year’s Achilles heel of a bullpen, but because within each of us innately rests the belief that lightning which has struck twice couldn’t possibly make a third visit.

Mother Nature has a funny way of defying expectations.

One has to ask why Mets fans seem to be so beaten so early in a year wrought with such misfortune. Mets fans have always been an emotional bunch. Maybe it comes from the history of the club and the Casey Stengel that lives in each of us. Maybe it’s the nature of rallying behind an underdog, or, in most years, a palpable sense of heart that rubs off into the stands. But after the tightrope heartbreak of the past few seasons, maybe it has more to do with a sense of entitlement, a feeling that fans deserve a return instead of being punished by the regular day-to-day trials of this team. For their investment of time, money, and emotion, fans felt they were owed a great year from what was billed as a reinforced core, to make up for the embarrassment of the past two.

Or maybe the feelings come from a long hidden reality that is now finding the spotlight: The evil Phillies or the killer Braves or the resurgent Marlins, all of which miraculously and seemingly sadistically “step-up their game” whenever they face the Mets, have nothing to do with why there haven’t been new banners to adorn the new stadium. Instead, the team that three times came so close to its post-season aspirations hasn’t made it far enough because they’re simply not good enough. Not strong enough physically, not smart enough tactically, and most certainly not stable enough mentally.

In turn, much in the same way the Wilpons were bilked of their imaginary investments off the field, fans who have turned a blind eye to what their team has been are being Madoff-ed in return, having their own hopes, dreams, and emotions for the team they invest in of themselves now shown to be baseless.

Adding insult, the only ones not wielding bats who actually can work to right this ship have made it clear they are totally disinclined to do so. In return, it’s alright for fans to take issue with the stance management, specifically Omar Minaya, has adopted. The answer to having problems isn’t “they’ll be fixed when they’re fixed.” The response should be “what can we do to fix them right now?” Yet when pointed in this direction, Minaya seems to only expect broken players to miraculously heal in time to fix a season that will then be beyond repair (if it’s not already). In the process, the signal he’s giving the existing players tells them he doesn’t believe they’re good enough to devote resources to. What a great way to inspire pride and drive: If your players haven’t already resigned themselves to failure, give them every remaining reason to check out. Whether big moves or some smaller ones, any level of action from management would give the players and fans the ability to move forward for a fight through the remainder of the season. And keeping the fans in the fight for the remainder of this season would at least allow us to keep picking up the pieces of the past few years, moving out of 2009 united behind every idyllic believer’s favorite battle cry: “Wait till next year.” In spite of everything, fans have still had heart, and expect their stammering General Manager to do the same.

One final note to Mr. Minaya: Action would probably also go a long way to keep filling seats in your new, pretty stadium, and keep the working stiffs who are contributing to your contracted salary with every ticket they buy (a contract that is third only in idiocy to the ones you gifted to Luis Castillo and Prince Ollie) from thinking of their local bar, SNY and Papaya King as a viable alternative to a trip to the ballpark.

For the record, I’ve got some predictions for the second half: I don’t expect Carlos Beltran to return to the team for any appreciable length of time this season. I believe the bruise he has will be found to be a more severe injury that will require more radical treatment. Similarly, I don’t expect Jose Reyes to be able to make a triumphant return, but will rather re-injure his leg quickly and either play out the season at much less than 100% or require season ending surgery. John Maine seems almost inevitably on the road to another medical intervention. Of the major players, I believe Carlos Delgado and Billy Wagner will come back just in time to show they still have enough talent to be worth something on the open market next year.

And unless there’s an epiphany within management or talent well before the end of July, I’m sticking with a prediction I made after just 2 weeks of this season had passed: This team, even healthy, doesn’t have what it takes to win enough, and will end the season right where they stand today - 4th place in the NL East.

I can’t begin to tell you how much I hope I’m wrong.